Video Editing : Coloring for Style

Morgan Paar
March 2007

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Color is a large part of your video image, and just as you control the actors, locations, props and dialog in your video, you can control color. Many directors in the past have controlled color on the set with lighting and costume, but many filmmakers today, with the advancement of computerized post-production techniques, are opting to control color in the edit bay. Robert Rodriguez's recent Sin City was a glossy black and white film with certain objects, such as a woman's lips or the blood spilling from a person's wound, bathed in rich color.

While Steven Soderbergh used special film stock and processing techniques to give three different locations different color feels in Traffic, and Francis Ford Coppola used difficult, frame-by-frame coloring techniques in Rumble Fish to colorize the marine life in his 1983 black-and-white film, these effects can now be obtained with today's higher-end desktop editing programs.

Most color correction is supposed to be subtle, such as bringing down the whites to legal broadcast levels, correcting under- or overexposure or maybe correcting a white balance problem. But that is not our objective today. We want to tweak the color for effect.

One popular effect is to add contrast to your moving image. We can use the Color Corrector 3-Way filter to do this by "crushing the blacks" or "blowing-out" the whites a bit. High Contrast scenes are often used for flashbacks and dream sequences, as well as a general stylized look. We can even create a Bleach Bypass look that is used often in commercials, music videos and films such as Saving Private Ryan and The Mexican.

Let's start by applying the Color Corrector 3-Way filter to a video clip. You will be able to see how you are affecting your image by simultaneously using the Waveform Monitor to see how crushed your blacks are or how high your whites are being pushed.

Unlike white levels, which can go above 100% and become "broadcast illegal," blacks can only be pushed to 0% or pure black. Pushing the dark or shadowed areas to 0% is referred to as "Crushing Blacks." Dark hair may have shadows in it, giving it detail and making it look natural. By lowering the blacks to give the image more contrast, you lose detail in important areas of an object, such as a character's face. To fix this, raise the luminance slider under the Mids color wheel to bring that detail back.

Likewise, you can raise the whites, but now you really want to keep an eye on your waveform monitor to assure you keep your whites under 100%. Many editing programs will have a Broadcast Safe filter that will clip whites at 100%, keeping it legal. Bear in mind that by pushing your whites, you may again lose detail in important areas, just like crushing blacks. To compensate, this time lower the luminance slider under the Mids color wheel. By doing both of these, crushing the blacks and pushing the whites, you can achieve a very high contrast image. Taking both to extremes will approach a black and white image. A useful tool while adjusting the blacks and whites is called the "before and after" check box in Final Cut Pro. Your program may have something slightly different.

Bleach by-pass is a technique used in feature films and achieved in the lab. We can simulate this look by creating a high contrast scene as detailed above and then lowering the overall saturation in the clip. Experiment with the sliders for desired results.

There are many black and white looks. When DPs (Directors of Photography) shoot film, they have black and white film stocks to choose from and use different lighting techniques and processing techniques to achieve their black and white look. It is difficult for us to achieve all of these variations, but there is a broad range of looks we can achieve. Instead of using the one-click black and white "button," use the Color Corrector 3-Way filter. Lower the Saturation slider all the way. Presto, you have black and white. But what often makes black and white so beautiful is the high contrast, as seen in films like Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch. You learned how to do this with the Crushing Blacks lesson earlier. You can go even more extreme by raising the Mids luminance slider, eliminating even more detail. You will most likely need to lower the Blacks a bit more and raise the whites a bit after changing the Mids slider.

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